You got it wrong. What's your empirical evidence to support your statement?
I don't really understand this. You claimed that it is impossible. Saying something is impossible is different than saying that it hasn't happened. To claim that something is impossible is a final statement where certain rules can never be satisfied. As such, you certainly can provide an argument for your claim. That being said, my counterargument would be a simple example: Person 1 wants an apple, and Person 2 wants money. Person 1 and Person 2 agree that 1$ is a fair price for an apple. Person 2 gives the apple to Person 1 in exchange for Person 1 giving 1$ to Person 2. Person 1 is happy because they have an apple, which they wanted, and Person 2 is happier because they received money, which they wanted. The net satisfaction is greater than zero — both sides received something that they wanted.
If the current system is intended to be capitalist, then it is not working as intended, as was described above.
Not at all. This is capitalism.
I can use one simple example to counter that: If one can find an example of a monopoly then the market in which that monopoly exists is not capitalist — one example to prove that point is private utilities.
That not how science works. You don't get to posit a theory without falsification and declare it as true until someone else comes up with a falsification force it and tests it.
You have no evidence you just have wild theories based on of "perfectly spherical cows in a vacuum" .
And monopolies prove the non existence of Capitalism. They're it's natural end result.
I mean... yeah, pretty much. I don't want to deal with maintenance or the legal stuff, so I'd be willing to pay someone to deal with all of that. Not the outrageous rates that rent usually goes for, typically.
Because you can't afford to buy a property? So you need someone else to do it for you and then pay them a service fee for living in their property.
There's a lot of smaller victories to win before we can have the big victory of outlawing landlords, so we should fight those first imo.
I am not a landlord. Yet.
When i do buy a 2nd property I do intend to rent it out at a reasonable price - and I have no guilt over doing so because all of our country's private property is being bought up by foreign "investors" driving up the cost of ownership and rents while leaving properties unoccupied. It's disgusting and I'll fight it directly when I can afford to.
I'm not completely against the concept of renting. But imo the property should be owned either by the inhabitant of it, or the state. And then the state employs a custodian in charge of repairs and administration (you know, the only useful aspects of a landlord), while renting it out for a low price. And in order to keep prices a s low as possible, maintenance is supplemented by a tax.
The problem with private landlords of one or two extra properties, while they're often not morally bankrupt, is that they tend to be wholly inept at the custodian part. Plus, if properties are all owned in small numbers rather than organized on the large scale, that's just very inefficient.
That does sound like it would be of benefit but I'm not sure how realistic it is to set up a system like this and it work for everyone - would the government just start buying property off people? Would that crash or balloon the market? How do you ensure that families aren't priced out of moving home either by higher property prices (from the government buying up everything) or from a catastrophic crash caused by no one wanting to buy property as investments?
Also how would the government provide attractive housing options across the economic spectrum across the whole of the country? Sounds like a monstrously large government department would need to be formed, which amongst other things would be very inefficient and goes against the objectives of the government. Take for example state health care- there is only one tier of care, and if you want anything better you pay for it privately. If we had the same for housing but didn't have the private option then in all liklihood the government would be thrown out and the next one would be the one who promises private housing. Because like it or not, the middle class doesn't want to live like the working class.
As I said, there a lot of battles to win and I think this anti-landlord stuff is just short sighted because there is no realistic solution that could be implemented today even if a country was willing - which it isn't. Instead we should focus on fighting the smaller fights that would lead us towards the utopia: rent control, taxation, foreign "investors", empty dwellings, single-family properties etc....all of these things could be vastly improved today for the benefit of everyone except those leaching on society.
You could still have different prices, albeit lower ones. Renting then becomes part of a resources allocation game. If you want a bigger/more luxurious home, you pay more and have less for other things. If a fancy house isn't so important to you, you can get a cheaper one and have more money left for vacations, fine dining, cinema, etc.
As for the efficiency, that government department could take lessons from big property owners and organize like them, only with state subsidies and without profit goals. That way, the middle class, by virtue of having more money, could still afford better housing. Also, I don't want the middle class to live like the working class, I want the working class to live like the middle class. Also also, there's no "middle class", only parts of the working class that got lucky. But they're fundamentally still beholden to their employers' whims.
Incremental change withing the current system is good and important, but we nonetheless have to discuss the big break that has to occur at some point, and what comes after. Incremental change can only take us so far.
The issue with that is that you're still making money on a human right. That property is gonna gain value and eventually you'll be able to sell it for more than you bought it for, all on the back of the tenants. Unless you're planning to give the tenants the house when they pay the value of it but at that point there's no reason for you the own it to begin with.
They do though? They provide a place to live that you can move into way faster than you can if you were buying it. They cover the maintenance costs, and some even provide properties that are fully furnished.
I agree that they hoard properties for financial gain but they do provide something.
Yes. I would say people shouldn't have to pay for the basic necessities required to live. Why should anyone live with the threat of homelessness and starvation?
Because it takes time and resources and create and maintain housing... who will pay for it, and why is it the landlord's fault instead of whoever isn't taking that responsibility (government???).
You gotta separate the concept of a right from fulfilling them.
Says who?
If a human right only exists on paper it's not a right - it's a buzzterm for political racketeers to throw around. Fulfilling a "bill of rights" is the core part of the (so-called) "social contract" between the liberal state and it's subjects - if it's merely "fulfilling" those by pretending they exist, the existence of the liberal state - and liberalism itself - becomes irrelevant and unjustifiable to the subjects.
My landlord didn't pay for nor make the land my place is on. Nor the place I reside on. Yet he jacks up the rent every march as soon as he can, as much as he legally can.
My landlord doesn't clean the lots, doesn't clean the public bathrooms, doesn't do anything but come on by to complain about the lots he doesn't improve.
How he is providing anything but less money in my family's bank account, and an headache to everyone he complains to?
I had a good landlord, so they’re definitely out there. Mine didn’t raise my rent more than $50 in a decade of living there, and was pretty great and quick about repairs. I am sorry others have had the experience they’ve had, and I think it’s more to do with private equity buying real estate, or some kind of landlord with 10+ units etc. I think the mom/pop landlord with the odd house they rent out when their family isn’t using it are pretty chill. I am sure there are examples to prove me wrong though
You're right, there are good examples out there. The point is they're statistical anomalies not the rule. Landlords by and large serve very little societal purpose.
When a house is an investment that grows in value society attempts to maximize scarcity, fewer houses or higher demand means more growth in their value. But imagine we lived in a society where we had more houses than we need, a surplus, because we valued housing people whenever they needed housing and we knew roughly how many houses we needed to do that.
You could move anywhere and find a house to own at a cost you could afford. Imagine housing wasn't a massive store of value such that multiple bureaucratic steps were created to nickle and dime the transaction. Buying a home could be easy.
You could find a vacant house or one that has leaving owners, inspection papers were regulated and up to date, you could buy it off of them using your money or a loan from the government, and you could move in just like if you were renting.
You don't have to save up for money to buy a home in a society where housing people is a priority. Housing would be cheaper, cost of living would be lower, purchasing power would be higher, and we could have methods in place for transitioning ownership without requiring a lump sum of cash cause no one's expecting a massive windfall immediately. Ya know, loans.
Living on the street would be a fictional concept, encouraging homelessness is a societal choice - we could house everyone on the streets within the year if we wanted to. Does that mean long term hotels wouldn't exist? No. That's an actual service being provided.
I'm just saying, if landlords served a purpose we could enable that service as a society but if housing wasn't an investment vehicle it's pretty clear the number of landlords would plummet over night and we'd quickly realize relatively few people liked the "service" they were receiving.
Well I wouldn't describe myself as a capitalist per se. I don't believe there's infinite resources but I do believe there are better, more efficient ways of distributing them - especially with housing. We definitely live in 3d space, I don't really know what this comment is referring to or it's use.
Probably a bit of both, insane and delusional, but I also think imagining a better solution requires a smidge of both.
Again, your loan comment doesn't make much sense to me because you failed to contributing a meaningful comment - you could elaborate but I suspect you don't believe government financing is a thing? Or that interest rates can be zero? I'm not really sure, but I can elaborate my original concept - because I'm not an Internet troll and I genuinely want people to imagine and work towards a better future.
Houses are expensive products, we can agree on that, even if they weren't investment vehicles it takes a team of people months to construct a good house and a lot longer for an apartment or larger complex. Since everyone should be able to own their home, pretending for second we went so far as to abolish the concept of renting, we would need people to be able to afford housing immediately upon becoming an adult and choosing to live somewhere else. Normally we think of this as rent, we pay someone else's mortgage with our money because we didn't have the capital to purchase it directly in the past. I. My proposed future, there'd be no landlords to pay mortgages for, so we'd take out our own mortgage to pay for our housing.
Now I think this is where people imagine today's mortgages and systems being imposed on an 18 year old and think that's foolish. That's why i clarify housing as a product instead of an investment vehicle is cheaper, and housing as a right or a goal of society means mortgages aren't for profit. So someone buys a home that costs less than todays home using a loan who's interest is less than todays interest - likely the first from the previous owner, construction company, or the government and the second from some level of government.
It's how loans work but instead of for profit they're for the betterment of society. We do this all the time for various reasons today. The PPP loans being forgiven is one example, so is 0% student loans, and if the government wanted to charge 1-2% interest for a good reason we have historical precedent to that as well. Idk what about this is so hard to understand for you but hopefully this helps. :p
The landlord hate is fucking exhausting around here. See an old comment of mine from reddit:
I had a very devout Christian landlord. We got a letter before Christmas, "Costs are going up for me..." Here we go. Well, we were getting a sweet deal as it was.
"...and I know costs are going up for you too so we're dropping your rent from $550 to $500. Have a Merry Christmas." That wasn't for December, it was from there on out. I don't cry over much of anything but I teared up reading that.
Dude walked the walked without talking a bunch of talk.
And that wasn't just us. He did that for everyone. Also, although only a trailer house, it was in the bougie suburb in 2018. The rent was already so low as to be unheard of. Dude bought the 6-trailer park and the RV place across the street, fixed it all up very nicely, no raise in rent. Since we were on the end facing his junkyard of crap, he put a privacy fence in for our wedding present.
Dated a girl in his largest RV park. Haven't seen a nicer one unless it was on the beach or somewhere upscale. Everyone got free internet.
INB4, "Yeah, well, that's an exception. Most landlords, bla, bla, bla." I've had all sorts over 30-years of renting. Almost all were guys who had a house or three and were barely making anything on the deal after mortgage and repairs. Institutional investors are 100% of the problem.
I’m familiar with some positively pleasant police officers that help around the local elementary school. All the adults and kids love them.
That doesn’t make me reject ACAB though. I don’t know what those cops have been up to in the 99% of their working hours where I don’t see them. Normally nice people do horrible shit all the time even without qualified immunity!
And even if they are as squeaky clean as cops be, the saying isn’t “a few good apples purifies the bunch.”
You can actually be a good landlord. In theory. But at the point where you actually become a good landlord, it's more of a public service than something you actually make money on.
I'll just point out I've had a lot of landlords and never had one do that. Nor have I known one. While they may exist, I'll count it in the realm of "I'll likely never see one in my lifetime." Or maybe I'll see one. So to me, the Good Landlord is a theoretical or a parable.
Because most people don't get into real estate to do public good. Most people get into real estate, become landlords, to make money off people's need for land and housing. It'd be like trying to whitewash criminality because vigilante heroes exist. Yeah, vigilantes might exist and are technically criminals, but that's not really the core conception of "a criminal".
Because if you're a landlord as an individual, a a human being, you're not what people mean when they say "landlord". You rent property - you can do that with a conscience, but that doesn't deserve the title of landlord
The term "landlord" refers to people who own homes as a business - people who create layers between them and the people they affect, bureaucracies or sheer numbers they can min-max without guilt.
Context matters - the person I rent from is my landlord, but that person is not primarily defined as a landlord. They rent out a couple properties, but they have a job - being a landlord is not their career
You can call them a landlord (and they can call themselves one in certain contexts), but in the larger systematic context someone who rents out a room obviously is categorically different.
The line is blurry, but honestly I don't think it matters if you rent out your basement, your old house, or even a few houses. At some point it becomes a full time job (for someone), and that's where I think the line is
And as far as companies, the landlords are the ones who own the company holding ownership.
It can also refer to the company itself as it's a person legally (unfortunately). It's not used that way in everyday conversation
But in everyday conversation it's normal to refer to the manager of the management company as your landlord, which is often an employee of a company that oversees bookkeeping and maintenance hired by the actual owners
Ultimately, I think it's important to fight for this distinction because language changes with use. By dragging in everyone who owns a second property or rents a room, we draw a line on the wrong side of working class people and their family who aren't the problem
I think you're mixing up "there are bad landlords" with "landlording is bad". I'm sure there were good slave owners as well but it doesn't mean slavery was good. In someways landlords are modern slave owners. They can treat you humanely but at the end of the day they're taking a slice of your money just so you could have a roof over your head.
Hypothetically, if tomorrow your government would say that whatever house/apartment you live in right now is legally yours to keep would you miss your landlord? I very much doubt it.
Are you saying there should only be owning housing? What do the people that can't afford a house or flat do? Is it entirely the states job to build housing then and give housing away?
Are you saying there should only be owning housing?
Isn't this the world right now? Even you rent your landlord owns the house you rent.
What do the people that can't afford a house or flat do?
Part of the reason people can't afford a house is because of landlords. If housing would be more affordable more people could afford houses.
Is it entirely the states job to build housing then and give housing away?
Not entirely, but where I live the state has built social housing for people who couldn't even afford to rent a house. The state owns the house, but they're not trying to extract profits from the people living there. The state is simply giving them a roof because otherwise those people would live on the street. I see nothing wrong with that.
Your lifetime of experiences does not consistute a meaningful sample size when compared to everyone else's. It can leave you feeling or believing something completely different than everyone else, for good reason, but that doesn't make it true.
Most landlords own property because it is a vehicle for wealth growth. And if someone owns something because it makes them money every year they are likely attempting to or interested in maximizing that return. That means cheap maintenance, little to no improvements, and an increasing price tag like an investment vehicle instead of a decreasing price tag like a consumable good.
If landlords were systemically good, if the overwhelmingly majority of landlords were good, rent would go down every year as the building and utilities get used - only going back up after real meaningful renovations.
My last flat had an awful kitchen design, very aesthetic but a nightmare to actually cook in. Can you imagine living in your own home and hating something you Interface with everyday multiple times and not changing it despite knowing you have the money and skills to do so? I can't. But because I have a landlord, because people have landlords they are stuck with the decisions of someone who either makes absolutely or relatively bad decisions all the time. My current flat the bathroom is a nightmare to live with because a quarter of the room is a bathtub and yet there's no place to put your toothbrush or plug in a water pick/hair dryer/razor. I'd happily change the entire bathroom, renovate it to include a decent sized shower, add electrical outlets and kitchen sink that isn't just a bowl - but again I can't because that isn't putting money into my landlords pockets and because they're not planning on living here ever again (if they ever did) they don't care how it is to live in. That's what being a landlord does to someone naturally, it's understandable but the reality is you care less about a place you're not living in, you're spending a lot of money for a place you're not living in so you want to make that money back so you can improve the place you are actually living in so you're naturally getting more stingy and cheap at your other properties, and over time the incentives of the system realign your values and behaviors.
No, I don't think your lifetime of "good landlord stories" is a meaningful data point to change what the overwhelming majority of people experience every day of their lives nor the systemic logic/reality of the situations. Good people can become landlords with good intent but they can't stay good and be a landlord because being a landlord is inherently an anti-productive thing to be in society - overtime the incentives change people into doing things that hurt others for their own interest.
That's not true. You'd have to gauge your eyes out for lusting after a woman. And women? They aren't allowed to reject their husband's sexual advances. Which doesn't sound extreme until it turns out hes got a scat fetish.
The first part of your argument kinda supports mine.
Jesus said if you can't quit staring at, or keep your fuckin hands off women, cause you're so pathetic about attractive women, gouge your eyes out and cut off your hands. Cause you're the problem.
As for the second part was that something Jesus himself preached? Or is that more of that Paul dudes bullshit?
I'm not going to tell anybody what to do or who to vote for but one of two things are very likely to happen at the end of this election:
Biden is re-elected. We continue with the status quo. We have a chance to make small incremental steps toward a better future.
Trump is elected. Two Supreme Court justices retire and Trump appoints two more. At that point he will have appointed FIVE of NINE Supreme Court justices. We have already seen what they're willing to do. Imagine what they will do in the literal decades to come.
Choose what you want to do, but take responsibility for your choice. Vote in your local elections. Big changes can happen from the ground up.
It's the federal judge appointments that matter and almost nothing else. Most of what he does can be undone except for that.. It would cause a generation of damage.
Sorry, you will get big changes voting for Trump. becasue too much is already in place to make those types of changes happen. I dont agree with these changes, but to say they are the "same" is a dangerous opinion.
The person at the top is needed to green light policy.. those lower down present such policy.. While this can seem boring it is important, since while by definition the president will be at the center of their party. If the party you vote for is most interested in vetoing everything of the other party.. even if they agree with the law in general, there is no progress.
Of course you must do more than just vote for the least bad president to make the change happen.. However if you can't at least do that you own the results os the OP said.
"But take responsibility for your choices"strikes me as hilarious. Voting is not public. In a democracy with private polling,hardly anybody takes responsibility for their choices. Actually, zero percent. That is why the elected president is never popular for like the first year in office. Wouldn't it be lovely if people assumed their responsibility for making choices, though? I would be on speaking terms with so many people from my past if they actually learned from their own stupidity.
This is ridiculous. There are a lot of sanctimonious fundamentalists in the world, and there are a lot of genuinely good people who identify as Christian. Some of the best people I know are Christians. They're not inherently hateful bigots, in fact I'd wager those are a loud minority.
There are good people who are Christian, sure. But they're only good people because they are bad Christians. They (their denomination) have cherry picked the least contentious passages and ignored the most hateful.
A 'Good Christian' is a creature of bigotry and contradiction, who spares no bias for which passages are morally good or bad. In some sense, The Westborough Baptist Church embrace many of the worst aspects of Christianity, they are Good Christians (but bad people).
This is nonsense. The bad people who call themselves Christians are the ones cherry picking bigotry. The Christian message is, fundamentally, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:30-31). There are a lot of hateful bigots who put a cross on the building, and those are the loud minority. A good Christian is one who prays quietly alone at home, not shoving their religion in other people's faces (Matthew 5:6).
Westboro Baptists are bad Christians, as are any others who spew hate and intolerance against others.
Okay. When I say "Christian" I'm referring to followers of the teachings of Jesus. Lots of people have a lot of commentary about a lot of things. One of those people was Paul, who wasn't a disciple and never met Jesus. Timothy is, purportedly, Paul's correspondence with some guy named Timothy. There are many who feel that Paul seriously corrupted the original Christian message.
Forgive me if I don't consider the Pauline epistles to be representative of the core Christian message.
The Bible is the Torah + the Gospels of Jesus + a ton of editorialized commentary, filtered through multiple stages of politicized selection. Yes, the fundamentals fit on a post it: love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is parables and commentary, some by Jesus, some by less gregarious personages.
Some modern "Christians" obsess over the less gregarious commentaries (e.g. Paul), some obsess over twisted interpretations of these already twisted commentaries. Such is history.
But the message is the golden rule: love thy neighbor as thyself. All the rest is parables to illustrate variations on that theme. The bad stuff was added later, and it's the same exact bad stuff that creeps into any emergent structure. Shitty people will gravitate to The Current Popular Thing to peddle their shitty ideologies, especially if they can creep in under the premise of divine sanction.
You'd have to be pretty stupid to believe that centuries-later editorialization by opportunistic shit-heads is representative of the core ideologies of an older movement.
You said you blame capitalism for problems, I assume you like Communism/Socialism?
Stalin co-opted Communism, that means Communism supports authoritarianism right? National Socialists are obviously Socialists since they took the name and published a lot of stuff right? That means Good Communists support Siberian prison work camps and Good Socialists support the Holocaust, right? Any Communist or Socialist who acts like a decent human being in spite of the evils done in the name of a twisted simulacrum of Communism or Socialism is a Bad Communist/Socialist, right?
Otherwise, you'd have to acknowledge that sometimes, over the course of a movement, bad actors try to co-opt the name of that movement for their own corrupt personal gain, and that sometimes if those bad actors have secured significant political influence they can manufacture consensus on the "official" beliefs of that movement through "official" publications.
So choose: is Hitler a Good Socialist, or is Paul a Bad Christian?
There's no difference, you're just a hypocrite. What's good for the goose is good for the gander: either a message is corruptible, or it isn't. Either the total corpus of Christianity/Communism is canon, or it isn't. Either the evils enshrined in later "Communist" literature is sacrosanct, or the evils enshrined in later "Christian" literature is suspect. "The Bible" is a political corruption of Christianity no less than modern China is a political corruption of Communism. If the Bible denotes the definitive Christianity, then Mao denotes the definitive Marxism.
To claim otherwise it's hypocritical double-speak. Are you a hypocrite, or do you acknowledge the Bible might be a slightly more politically compromised document than you've heretofore claimed?
There are no inconsistencies in the communist manifesto as far as I'm aware. It certainly doesn't endorse totalitarian dictatorships or genocide (though the bible does, multiple times).
Yet, your bible details rules for slaves and never corrects itself. The bible endorses and encourages slavery. You just choose to ignore it.
The Bible is a particular selection of disparate writings collected over centuries and codified millennia after the events described.
By like comparison, Communism as a corpus is composed of the exploits of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
The gospels of Christianity are more similar to the Manifesto itself, and contain none of the dictatorships or genocides to which you allude. The gospels do not encourage slavery. If you judge the Bible based on the commentaries and political corruptions, then so judge Communism by gulags and genocides. If one is corruption, then both are. If one is canon, then both are. If you judge Christianity by Paul, judge Communism by Mao. Mao published. Paul published. If it's unfair to judge Communism by Mao, it's unfair to judge Christianity by Paul.
You have a fundamentally flawed viewpoint that all Christian denominations take equally and at its core believe 100% the Bible in every word no exception.
You can’t blame innocent Christians at the local church who fly rainbow flags and BLM flags for some dictator committing genocide elsewhere with a biblical justification. There’s a huge spectrum there just like anything else. Yeah a good majority is trash and lots of the people are trash, but by instantly assuming that a Christian is a bad person or that they are a good person but bad at their religion makes you trash.
L
You're missing the point. These Christians who are flying rainbow flags and marching in BLM protests are good people.
They are however, not good Christians. The bible outright says gays will go to hell. If you want to read some external shit into it to make you feel like your book doesn't say you're siding with abominations, go ahead.
I'm keenly aware of that as I have recovered from religion.
The fact remains that being a Christian is at odds with being a good person. Bigotry is baked in to Christianity. If you want to cherry pick the good parts, that's great, but it doesn't erase the suffering which is still being perpetrated due to the explicit wording in the bible.
There are warlords in Africa who justify enslavement because the bibles explicitly permits it, and never makes any effort to clarify that slavery should no longer be permitted.
You would think that at some point, God would want to convey to everyone that slavery was a symptom of the times, thousands of years ago, and is no longer permitted as of the New Testament, but that never happens.
I don't like Biden, but I don't think he is a threat to the American way of life. Ineffectual? Absolutely. On the wrong side of history? So is most of our history, join the club. We do, as a nation, need to do better.
But I do, wholeheartedly believe that if Trump is elected, we will fall from a failed democracy, to fascism; and fascism always fails. Usually in a very violent manner for most concerned.
Why is being a landlord any different than owning some other commodity to make money? Like if I bought shares of a company that pay a dividend. Or I bought a car and rented it out. Or buying land and selling tangerines I grew on it
Fought over since before most "commodities" existed , and maybe most religions -at many scales from the world, to countries, to a sopt by the river bank, or the comfy chair in the living room - including by various human and non-human species.
Pursuit of economic and political power though control/acquisition of land just has so much glorious and colourful heritage; it's no mere pleb of a commodity .
Something most everyone could use just a little bit more of.
Not everyone could use more cars and tangerines.
cars and tangerines have a generally more competetive market of sustitutes.
Land doesn't really have substitues.
If i could build a house/farm out of tangerines without any land needed, i'd get your point,
It is conveyed that the left should not resort to populism and simple imagery such as "wojacks" We prefer referring to nuanced 500 page essays to convey our arguments so that anyone without sufficient vocabulary and/or time will remain excluded from our circles.
she's alluding to the fact that these characters — the 'soyjack' and 'gigachad' — are historically, and still actively are, alt-right charicatures. together with their friends, 'tradwife' and 'doomer (girl)': they represent misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist tropes.
Must they continue to do so? On their own they are nothing but stand-ins for people or ideologies. If we can reclaim entire slurs, surely we can reclaim these, no?
Even on their own, the shitty alt-right ideology is still present. Notice how the chad, the guy we’re meant to agree with, is very often (not always, but often) a white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy?
Or how the guy with the wrong opinions we’re meant to mock is often a drooling person with a dented head?
The ableism and white supremacy of the right is still perceptible in the meme, even when it’s used to push leftist messages.
and on a more basic level, the idea of bad opinion = ugly, good opinion = beautiful is shitty and flirts with white supremacy (because what’s beautiful is very often dictated by eurocentric beauty standards), but that’s a problem in our societies as a whole, not just with this meme
None of those things necessarily need to be true, especially not
the idea of bad opinion = ugly, good opinion = beautiful is shitty and flirts with white supremacy
The shouting crying soyjak for depicting opinions of people who continue to hold stupid opinions despite all evidence to the contrary fits fairly well, and if you don't like the beauty standards set by the default chad, there's nothing stopping you from substituting your own, or just using any calm, levelheaded character in its place.
I disagree. Memes are powerful tools and by denying ourselves the use of popular memes we grant "the enemy" an enormous advantage. Better we acknowledge that the issue is not the meme itself, but how it is used.
But there is an issue with the meme itself. It often associates whiteness (notice how the chad is explicitly a white guy with blonde hair and blue eyes) with being good/right, or physical characteristics associated with 'stupidity' (drooling, dented head) with being wrong. The underlying white supremacy & ableism is still there.
And no, we shouldn’t compromise on our values to use popular memes.
I dunno, I see your point but does the guy on the left really have a dented head? I thought those were forehead lines from emotional agitation. Also, where is the drool? I only see tears. I don't really see the inherent ableism, as much as I see a negative representation things like lack of emotional regulation, "neckbeardyness," etc. I agree moreso on the whiteness and general tidyness of the chad, and the association of beauty with good and ugliness with bad -- I kinda buy your argument there. It is pretty shit that we do that, but I don't necessarily think it's wrong for the OP to use this meme template. Ignorant? Maybe.
I feel like you could use similar strategies to decry any meme. For example, the glorification of violence through imagery and use of the word "weapon" in your own meme. Obviously, I'm not going to seriously suggest you're perpetuating the glorification of violence through your meme, but I kinda think its the same with OPs meme.
Edit: to be clear, all my thoughts on this are entirely from the last 20 min. I assumed you've thought more about this subject than me, so I consider myself pretty swayable. But idk, my initial reaction is that we're looking too far into a meme.
When I talk about dented head and drools, I’m not referring to this soyjak in particular (which is far from the worst), but many who are commonly used have that, such as this one (obvious CW for ableism)
Sorry for the confusion there!
(to clarify, I don’t think OP had any shitty intentions. but that’s why we should point out this stuff IMO, because it slips through the cracks and even people with good intentions can unknowingly spread shitty ideologies. I’m certainly not free of blame either)
as for the rest… well yea, no piece of media is morally without faults, memes included. but in the case of wojaks, I fell like the faults are high and obvious enough that we should still avoid using them.
Oh yeah that one is bad, you're right. Also the meme with the bell curve is definitely ableist. Hmm, you definitely bring up good points. Gotta chew on it a little. Much of this is just ingrained in us.
I never liked Biden since the Obama years and I now hate him quite a bit. Sadly voting for him at this point is simply necessary, because if I am not in a good enough state to survive then I cannot support the Palestinians nor Ukrainians.
I don't get this attitude. Obama was literally against gay marriage. Biden's policies have been so much more progressive than Obama's and yet nobody I know likes him more. I'm not a "fan" of Biden but that's because it's weird and creepy to be a "fan" of government officials. He does a lot I don't like but if you literally hate Biden I don't forsee any president ever meeting your criteria.
The vote I cast in 2020 was against trump and not for Biden. I feel pretty good about that decision considering what happened afterwards. I'll vote against Trump again as many times as it takes.
This particular vote is an "A\B" question. No matter what you do A or B will be chosen. All other "choices" will be ignored and will have 0 effect on the outcome. The only thing that matters in this vote is who wins.
Not voting at all, or even voting for C, both have the exact same results as voting for whoever wins.
So if you choose not to vote, and Trump wins, then you created the same results as if you had voted for Trump.
If you wanted to vote against Biden but did not want to vote for Trump then you should have voted in the primaries to defeat Trump before he was the only alternative to Biden. In fact, of you had blocked Trump from being nominated again, Israel would not be doing what they are doing. Israel actively wants Trump in power, so that is why they are doing this now.
Yeah this isn't even like a complicated idea; I don't get why people have trouble with it.
As a practical real world example: in the 2000 election, Bush won Florida by 537 votes. (the exact number is questionable because of the recount and the bullshit that was Bush v. Gore. Which we can and should be very angry about but also doesn't change the conclusion here).
97,488 Floridians voted for Ralph Nader.
Now, I'm gonna assume that people who voted green care about like. The environment. And I'm quite sure that Nader was more progressive on environmental issues than Gore was -- Gore would probably have been a boring and relatively centrist democrat. But by voting for Nader over Gore we didn't get Nader, we got Bush.
If even 1% of the green voters in Florida had held their noses and voted for the candidate who they maybe didn't align quite as well with but had an actual shot at winning, we could have had a president who actually recognized climate change as a threat almost a fucking decade before we did,instead of a climate change denier. Would it have fixed everything? No! But we'd be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.
Exactly. This is what I cannot understand from all these "true hyper-leftist" people. You do realize that the future of the USA is at stake here, and that our system is fundamentally rigged to not allow any real alternative as a choice, right? Your brain-dead "BIDEN BAD VOTE THIRD PARTY" is just going to enable Trump and then you'll never be able to vote for anyone ever again as you are forced to participate in alt-right Trump rallies every single day and post on the Trumpernet about how much you love Trump. This isn't much of an exaggeration -- this where they want to go if Trump wins.
You're not supporting Biden. This isn't how our vote works. You're voting for the person less likely to fundamentally fuck our country up. And in case you still don't quite understand who this is, that is Biden.
Nah, everyone is free to hate. However, support from others on this planet against Trump is also important. To some degree we all affect one another and his rise into the seat again would directly impact a LOT of people, even outside the U.S.
BUT
I'm hoping that there is now enough anger and frustration for us to carry the momentum past the voting gates and straight into very strong pressure towards all politicians. This IS fixable. The message is there, even if it will result in violence from our militarized police force.
This is ignorant fear mongering. If thats the way the system works as you say? Then its our duty as citizens to destroy the system entirely. If thats America then this is not a democracy and its certainly not a democracy worthy of being preserved. IF that is the system you claim Joe biden stands to preserve? Then we SHOULD let trump come in and tear the whole thing down.
I think trump is a fundamentally morally detestable character. Butt iv lived thru 1 trump presidency. Hes backwards, hes an ass. Hes not a good leader. But hes not the end of everything as we know it. And I'm not giving more power to a corrupt party of beaurocrats who continue to lie to my fucking face while selling me out to corporate interests behind my back and completely hollowing out our countries economic capability all the while refusing to make good on any of their promises and funneling all my tax money to foreign wars while we bleed for healthcare. Fuck this countries "democracy" the fact you even believe we live in a democracy is hilarious. Congress has a 14% approval rating. Our representatives do not represent the will of the america people. They represent the will of their largest financial donors.
I get what you're saying, but I'm trying to parse what is actual "things that can / will happen under a Trump presidency" vs "what the democrats and liberal media want us to think can / will happen under a Trump presidency". I'm likely voting Biden simply because I saw what a shitshow the Supreme Court became (and will be for quite some time) under a Trump presidency. But I also notice Biden did fuck all about it so part of me wonders if the democrats are doing nothing for the simple fact that they have a fearmongering device setting the up for the next election. I mean, honestly the state of politics in the US is just pathetic.
I feel the frustration, and agree with it. But the choice you’re describing does not exist. The options aren’t “fucked up status quo” with Biden and “start over fresh” with Trump, though. The options are “fucked up status quo” with Biden and “way fucking worse corporatism, inequality, treatment of any marginalized/minority group, personal freedoms, bodily autonomy, religious liberty, foreign relations, healthcare, education, environment… oh and let’s just completely give up the little voice we have” with Trump.
All the stuff that pisses you off about the corrupt bureaucrats in the Democratic Party exists across the board in the Republican Party, but worse.
I could see somebody voting for Trump hoping that the world ends more quickly and rebuilds so that their great-grandkids, if they exist/survive, might live in a better system. But the price for placing that unlocke unlikely bet is to fuck up the system now and in the near future, negatively affecting tens of millions to billions of actual people.
Ignorant? Look up Project 2025. Then tell me I'm exaggerating. You are either laughably ignorant about our situation, or you're a Trumper trying to convince people that everything will be fine when it will absolutely not be.
Vote blue in 2024, then push better agendas and vote true left next time. Because I can guarantee you if Trump wins, you won't be voting any more.
The largest current of leftists aren't saying you cannot vote for Biden, and that you should vote third party, but that ultimately change comes from outside the electoral system.
Unfortunately unless a revolution falls into our laps and magically solves all our problems, the modicum of control we have over the steering of this ship is limited to voting and advocating for others to vote
They’ll never accept that, because they fundamentally see nothing wrong with the system. They want to preserve the broken machine, even if it doesn’t work for them. They think changing the oil will repair it, when it was designed to break.
More like we don't want to crash our only car when we don't have another means of transportation, and oops, now we can't get to work.
It's great to say "the system is broken and must be replaced." I agree! But nobody who says that, me included, has ever had anything resembling an actual plan to replace the system or to prevent something even worse from taking over once the system is destroyed.
Everyone gave the GOP shit for screaming about how Obamacare needs to be "repealed and replaced" but never saying what it should be replaced with (though that was because the "replace" part was a lie and they just wanted to go back to the bad old days of people being trapped in a job or entirely unable to get insurance because of a preexisting condition). It's the same thing with people saying the entire system of government needs to be replaced.
It's all well and good to say "choose another system of governance" but how do we implement this change? What is the mechanism under which we can replace our current system of government with Swiss democracy, without the old government just saying "lolno" and bombing it to shit? The only method I can think of is a constitutional convention, and right now we're closer to the right wing being able to call one and rewrite it to take pur rights back 200 years than we are to leftists implementing Swiss democracy.
Like... I would be thrilled if that were within the realm of possibility, but as it stands any possible options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists. That's what I mean when I say I've never seen an actual plan by leftists to overhaul the system--it's all arguing about what the sexy end goal should be, without bothering to talk about the boring minutiae of how to actually get to it. So far as I can tell, the "plan" to make all these needed changes, so far as any thought is put into it at all, is just a silent assumption of either "we lobby our politicians and they do what we tell them and nobody opposes our ideas" or "we do a violent revolution and kill all the bad guys without harming the good guys and we definitely win and accomplish our goal without someone else taking advantage of the chaos to do a fascism instead," depending on how radical the change is.
without the old government just saying "lolno" and bombing it to shit?
Make sure the old government doesn't have enough votes.
options for dramatically overhauling our system of governance is more likely to lurch us straight into permanent hard-right minority rule by a bunch of fascists.
Not the point. Trump needs to be defeated, and the way we're going to do that is voting for Biden. There's no other way. It's not going to happen. You are absolutely deluded if you think there is another way.
After we fend off the Trump bullshit, then, yes, we have to make actual change to push us much further left. I don't get how all the ultra-leftists cannot fathom this simple fact.
Because Trump is still a fucking threat, you assclown. His cronies are still in office. We are going to have to keep fighting this fight where it needs to be fought, then when that fight is done, THEN we push to the actual left. Is this so goddamn fucking hard for you "LOL DONT VOTE BIDEN SO TRUMP CAN BE PRESIDENT AGAIN" fucktwaddlers to understand?
I dislike them both. I think they are both horribly corrupt with different ideologies. I won't support either of them. I'm voting for RFK jr. The only sane and reasonable choice in this election.
Right? "the only sane choice"? The antivaxxer? The "covid is a bioweapon" guy? The "I don't think we need a ceasefire in Gaza" guy. That guy? What a fucking joke.
I want to up vote you for the chuckle you gave me, but I did that once with Trump and too many people took it seriously, and he ended up being the president.
This precise sentiment has gotten me told off a few times now. Usually with someone yelling the word "Genocide" over and over so I can't get a word in. People are so fucking dumb it's actually unbelievable.
Whatever my frustration, I just want us all to work together even after we get Biden a second term. The only reason, ONLY REASON, the GOP have their power is honestly because we can't stop slap fighting long enough to plant a foot in their asses. This would also work for the Democrats. We do have two feet. Whatever our perspectives and opinions, there is a single neigh universal truth we can all accept:
Putlers troll farms are maximally amplifying the Gaza tragedy in order to divide the west. The tragedy that his Iranian friends probably started for him.
Or… hmm yes of course Putin trolls love the Palestinian genocide as it distracts from Ukraine but maybe just maybe tax payers are existentially fed up with the US committing a genocide with their money and lying straight faced to tax payers about the impossibility of doing anything about it?
If not voting helps Trump then it helps Biden too. Trying to paint people who don't like Biden as Trump supporters is a propaganda meme that's trying to gaslight us all.
It's to devalue labor. The larger the workforce the less they can pay. Think of the pictures of kids with coal on their faces in the early 1900s. Appalachia was a full coal economy. Dirt poor, and still feeling the effects today. Regulate labor.
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